


In the Kingdom of the Blind

by JustACandle



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Age Difference, F/M, rated 'm' more as a precaution. this could really go in any direction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-15 05:20:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11799258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustACandle/pseuds/JustACandle
Summary: "To be honest, I was disappointed."“Because I wasn't like 'her', or because I wasn't like 'you'?”And then he did smile- a small, careful thing with a sliver of teeth showing.“Aloy, I think you and I are more alike than you realise.”Two years after he vanished she finds him again, in ruins as always, still searching for answers.





	1. Like a Long-Lost Friend

**Author's Note:**

> There's a user on tumblr that posts a lot about the relationship between Aloy and Sylens, and I never thought too much about it(because major age difference makes things a bit uncomfortable), but the more I thought about them, the more I realised I really love how they interact and the potential with the two of them.  
> This'll be short, and may or may not get graphic in the future. Depends on how I'm feeling + whether or not that's something anyone actually 'wants'.

“You.”

 

A sigh rasped out from him and he hung his head.

“I suppose it was only a matter of time before our paths crossed again.” He said, nonchalant but a little tired, and he turned to face her.

There was silence between them in this small ruined structure, the wind whipping snow flurries in through the ragged-edged windows. In the monotonous sea of grey and white before him, all the faded glory of the Old Ones and their ruined empire now resting in decay, she was a frank splash of color, of vibrance; of life.

“Aloy.” He greeted her with a slight inclination of his head. Her appearance had clearly matured- the lines of her face were more defined, showing off less cheek but more of her strong jaw. She took a step forward, coming more into the light, and it nearly floored him just how much she looked like Elisabet.

“Sylens.” She mirrored his gestured but not his inspection. Her eyes stayed fixed steadily on his own. “Don't tell me you're also here for the codes?”

“Ahh...” He almost smiled, a small twitch at the corner of his lips. “So you've caught on to the bigger picture at last.” She frowned.

“If you mean the ones behind HADES, then yes. Although I don't care as much about that as I do about Gaia.”

“What does the AI have to do with this?”

“Oh, there's something you _don't_ know? _What a surprise._ ” She would have seemed arrogant if she didn't sound quite so bitter. He guessed she still hadn't forgiven him for being so illusive with his answers. To be honest, he still didn't have the patience for it.

“It's been _how long_ and you're still behaving like a child?” He gave her the ghost of a dark look, more emotion than she had ever seen cross his face, and shoved past her towards the exit of the narrow structure.

“ _Two and a half years_ ,” she snapped. “and how would YOU feel if every time it seemed like you were actually getting somewhere, there was the same pompous bastard denying you information that you need?” He stopped at the ruin's open end, the jagged metal stretching out from him like the petals of a flower. The icy air picked up to smack a shock of red into his face. He puffed out a cloud of breath and turned back to her. She didn't look like she used to- a petulant child only interested in her own story and utterly uninterested in the bigger picture. She looked like what he had hoped to see two years ago: a young woman finally ready to not only discover the great secrets of the world, but fully ready to rip that information from anything- or any _one_ -who dared keep it from her. She looked fierce but her rage simmered under the surface instead of breaking free at any given opportunity. She wasn't flying in every direction on a whim anymore. She was a woman on a mission. Focused. Controlled. _At last_.

“You want answers.” He bottled his momentary admiration, hiding behind his usual mask of careful indifference. “To what, exactly?”

She stepped towards him again, closing the distance between them until the vapor of their breath mingled and drifted away with the wind.

“Everything.”

 

–

 

     The cave Sylens had led her to was not exactly what she would consider a home, but it suited him. Bits and pieces of machinery were scattered about in ways that probably made sense to him, but seemed an absolute mess to her. Papers littered the space, a pile of wrecked Focus pieces covered a small table nearby, and all along the wall to her left were stacks of unidentifiable Ancient Human artifacts. The only clear space was where she sat now, beside the fire almost perfectly centered in the small cave. Sylens stood opposite the fire pit from her, removing an extra layer of furs and discarding them on a stool nearby before turning to sort through a few bags of what appeared to be provisions. After a few minutes of quiet, he glanced over his shoulder at her.

“You were so desperate for answers, and now that you have me all but cornered here you are... silent.”

“I'm... not sure what to ask. To start with.” She sighed as the numbing cold finally left her fingers. “To be honest, I expected more of a fight from you. Or for you to... disappear again. Or something.”

“I have no intention of leaving just yet. There's too much here I still need to work on before I can... _disappear_.”

Aloy shifted on the sparse padding she sat on, not entirely convinced. There was something odd about all of this, the way he was speaking and the openness he had seemed to promise earlier. She just couldn't put her finger on it, except a vague suspicion that he was still trying to hold something back while also trying to give her what she wanted. In that way, nothing had really changed.

“Well, I guess to start with then... why _did_ you leave? Did you just, I don't know, get _bored_ with what was going on?” Her eyes narrowed a bit. “Or did you know there was someone behind HADES all along?”

A low “hmph” escape him; as much of a laugh as she had ever heard come from him and his expression seemed almost to soften a bit as he turned back to her, arms laden with food and a few cooking utensils.

“If I were in the least bit sentimental, I would be proud of you.” He set everything beside the fire. “You're learning to ask the RIGHT questions.” She almost snapped something bitter at him again, but bit her tongue. He sighed. “I think you're forgetting just how long I was with HADES before you entered the story. I suspected for years that there was more to the situation, but could never get anything from HADES itself. It wasn't until shortly before you defeated it that I knew for sure.”

“When you gave me your spear.” She murmured, watching him add diced vegetables into the pot that had been simmering with stew when they arrived.

“Yes. I was confident that you could finish what I had started and there was no reason for me to stick around. Not when there was no one left to provide me with answers.” He added the last bits to the pot, brushed his hands off, and turned his attention fully to her. “Next question.”

She stared at him and couldn't bring herself to speak for a long moment. All the time she had been searching for him, nearly a year now since everything had finally settled back home and in the Sundom, she had been saving up her questions, keeping an ever-growing list in her memory, but now that she had the opportunity to ask, she wasn't sure which one to go with. What did she most want answers to before he potentially changed his mind again? She chewed her lip.

“I suppose... I'd like to know what changed? Why are you being so forthcoming now? And why were you so guarded two years ago?”

A pang of something leapt into his face and left just as quickly. He leaned back, one leg drawn up with his arms resting on his knee, the other stretched out before him.

“To be honest, I was disappointed.”

“With me.” He nodded.

“With you. I had learned about Elisabet years before you showed up. Notes, holotapes, voice recordings, terminal entries... She was... remarkable. When you appeared on the Eclipse's network, I suspected what you were but wasn't really sure until you forced your way into every side of the conflict. Then I knew I had to help you.”

“You only helped me to help yourself.” She accused, sounding bitter again and hating it. Sylens didn't seem to appreciate it either, side-eyeing her with a small rise in his brow.

“Yes, but we've been over this, Aloy. All things considered, that part of the story could not have ended better.”

“You keep saying that, calling all of this a “story”! Are you really taking any of this seriously?”

“What would you rather I call it? Chaos, a travesty-”

“People _died_!”

“Yes! And they would have died regardless of how I felt about any of it.”

“And it's so much better, staying emotionally-detached from everything?” Aloy shook her head, disgusted.

“It would have been _so much better_ if I wept over every corpse on the road? No. By remaining 'emotionally-detached' I was able to move forward and work to stop what was going on. If I learned more about what had happened in the past and HOW it happened in the process, all the better.”

He stared evenly at her and she glared back across the fire. He sighed again.

“But to get back to your question, yes. I was disappointed in you. I had studied Elisabet and what she left behind for so long that I, unintentionally and perhaps irrationally, had very high hopes for you. I... suppose I expected you to be too much like her. And not really your own person. Elisabet Sobeck I knew I could work with. Aloy of the Nora? A more difficult option. An aggravating reality.”

“Because I wasn't like 'her', or because I wasn't like _you_?”

And then he did smile- a small, careful thing with a sliver of teeth showing.

“Aloy, I think you and I are more alike than you realise.” The smile closed, pulled up at one side a bit, and then all but fled, leaving a bare trace of its existence around his eyes. He stood and walked to his workbench. “Next question.”

“...Why are you doing this?”

“Because...” He paused, turning back to her with a half-ruined, sparking Focus in his hand. “I need your help again.”


	2. The Girl With All the Questions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure but this might drag a little. By my guess, there'll just be five chapters to this thing, maybe six, and these first two chapters were all settup. The rest should get to the meat of the matter.

   Two minutes of standing in the cold brought Aloy wide awake. Winter here didn't seem as severe as back home, at least in this valley, but the chill still bit deep and stung at her eyes, smarting as she blinked and stared bleary-eyed at the foggy, hazy valley before her. The ruin she and Sylens had had their reunion in the day before was labeled by her focus as an 'airplane', a craft she had had only a few encounters with in the past. It nestled lower down the canyon wall to her right, its nose crumpled against the canyon wall and the other end open to the elements and hanging out over a ledge. She glanced at the decayed wreckage on the valley floor and shivered a little, heading back into the cave.

“That's one way to wake up.” Sylens gave her an odd look over his shoulder from his place at the workbench, still tinkering with the various Focus pieces he had scattered about. He had been awake when she opened her eyes that morning and had still been up after she had fallen asleep as well; she wasn't actually sure if he had slept at all.

“Any luck?” She asked, crouching near the fire and poking at the remains of the stew.

“With?”

“Whatever it is you're working on. You didn't _explain_ what you were doing. You just said you need my help again.”

He was quiet for a minute, then sighed and rose, stretching and walking over to her.

“You asked about the codes yesterday.”

“Don't change the subject.”

He gave her a tired look and continued, poking at the fire with a fresh log.

“Just because I don't give a straight answer right away does not mean I'm not going to answer _at all._ The codes, HADES, and my purpose here are all linked.”

“Then what about GAIA?”

“We'll get to that later. To answer your first question, although I think by now it should be obvious- I am searching for the codes used by an unknown party to awaken HADES. If possible, finding that 'unknown party' would also be excellent, but I'm not going to get my hopes up.”

“To what end? Are you also trying to contact the other systems?”

“Assuming they're still active and didn't go the way of Gaia.”

Aloy frowned.

“I know HEPHAESTUS is still active... in some way. But, one of GAIA's files mentioned the other systems becoming erratic because of the signal. That's what caused the derangement, right? So even if they 'are' still functioning...” He nodded, expression grim, and Aloy continued, “What do you think they could help you with?”

“Why did I remain with HADES for so long?” He countered, staring pointedly at her.

“Information.”

“Exactly. But that begs the question...” He stopped messing with the food and turned his full attention to her, hands folded before him. “What are _you_ hoping to gain? You don't really think GAIA can still be fixed?”

She glared at him but choked down her frustration and shrugged it off.

“I'm hoping that the other systems can be fixed. If I can fix them, then perhaps they can fix GAIA. If they _can't_ fix her, then at least they'll be back to doing what they were supposed to, HOW they were supposed to.”

“No more derangement.”

“No more derangement.” She nodded.

“You think the codes can help you with that?”

“Not THE code. The one used before. But if I can find where it came from, I might be able to find one that I _can_ use, or... how to MAKE one, or... _something_.”

Sylens chuckled and stood, making his way over to a bedroll against one wall and fussing with a pack resting nearby.

“You never could leave well enough alone.”

“I wouldn't call leaving alone a being that makes hostile machines that attack people 'well enough', but we'll have to agree to disagree.”

“Sure. Are you ready to go?” He straightened, pack slung across his shoulders, and faced her. She nodded, grabbed her own pack, and followed him to the mouth of the cave, past the various coverings and back out into the snow.

 

   The cliff face was steep and crumbling in places. Sylens traversed it with what seemed to be familiarity and Aloy wondered briefly just how long he had been there. He led her up a path, climbing in places, making almost blind leaps in others, until they were at the top of the canyon, looking out into the frozen wastes.

“What led you here? Where are we going?” Aloy asked when they stopped to catch their breath from the climb.

“The plane. How I found it is a long story, but after I saw it... well, perhaps this is wild speculation, but it seems like where it was headed may be nearby.” Sylens groaned as he eased himself down onto a rock.

“You've been here awhile?” Aloy asked, sitting in the snow next to him, not minding the small amount of cold that sunk through her layers.

“A month or more.”

“And you haven't gone to this place yet because...?”

“It took a few weeks to get a certain piece of machinery working. It restored partial power to the plane and allowed my Focus to copy its flight plan. You came along right as I finally found the coordinates.”

“What do you think you'll find? Whoever sent the signal? Or do you think they're somewhere else?”

He stared at her for a long moment, then turned his attention back to the wastes. He took a sip of water and muttered,

“Always more questions.”

Aloy wrinkled her nose in a frown, mumbling,

“You say that like it's a bad thing.” She jumped a little when Sylens smiled.

“Not at all.”

 

Her stomach flipped. He was acting oddly... warm. This was the second time in less than a day that he had smiled at her. He was treating her not quite like an equal, but closer to that than he had when they first met. She shifted in the snow, not quite sure how to feel about anything.

They sat in silence for another minute before raising to take on the wasteland of rock and snow that lay in front of them. The snow itself wasn't deep, but the two of them still slipped and skidded about on the icy rocks, catching each other occasionally before someone could hit the ground.

 

An hour passed. The temperature dropped. Aloy thought she felt her eyes freezing over.

 

Another hour passed.

 

“Sylens?” She swallowed hard, worrying over the stiffness of her throat and how small her voice sounded.

“Not much... further... now...” He panted, his voice sounding almost as weak as hers.

 

Another hour. The temperature dropped again. She had grown up in the cold, but this was on another level. She had stopped shivering. Her skin had begun to numb half an hour ago and now she could hardly feel a thing. The snow blurred, the horizon disappeared. Not two yards ahead of her, Sylens started to disappear.

 

And then he was gone.

 

Aloy gasped, as much from the cold as from fatigue. The world swirled around her in white and grey and she was alone. Her mind went blank. In the back of her head crept up a line from one of Rost's many lessons, one that had been all but beaten into her- _keep moving or you'll die_.

Her whole body protested. Her left knee locked up. Her lungs burned and she could barely see anything. But she dragged herself along at a snail's pace, not sure she was even heading in the right direction. She carried on this way for almost ten minutes, almost blacking out, when her focus pinged and brought up a small dot on the horizon, glowing against the haze. She limped toward it, trying to pick up the pace, stumbling, and finally landing flat on her face on the ice, distantly registering that she couldn't even feel it anymore. Her face. Her arms. Her legs. Everything had gone numb. She wriggled, trying to move her arms to push herself up, but they had stopped responding. Mind too blank to panic, she settled for craning her head up to look at the waypoint still glowing. But what had been a bright dot in a sea of grey was now a small light centered in a door standing all by itself in the snow.

 _So that's it, then._ She thought as her head dropped and the fatigue took over. The black crept in. _After all of that, the building isn't even here anymore_.

She sighed and then her breath caught in her throat. A sound pushed back the soft creeping sleep- footsteps.

With one last push, she lifted her head just enough to look back towards the door- and found someone in the way.

“ _Sy_ -” Her voice rasped out and died in her throat as he stumbled over to her, crouching in the snow and pulling one of her arms up and around his shoulders.

 

Through her failing vision she caught glimpses of the ice and snow passing under her feet, a step, the door opening around them, and then a cracked stone floor. She finally blacked out as the door closed behind them.

 

   “You do like cutting it close, Aloy.”

Her eyes flickered open then winced closed again. The light was faint but everything hurt. After several minutes to adjust to being awake again, she started exploring the feelings of her body, checking in, making sure everything was how it should be. To her relief, nothing was missing. She swallowed and grimaced at the dry throat, her cracked and now bleeding lips. Sylens stood and went to her, crouched down next to her and lifted her gently, allowing a distressingly small sip of water to pass down her throat from his canteen.

“Take it easy.” He chided as she tried in vain to reach for it. “You'll get more, but take it slow.”

His bedside manner left something to be desired, but he was gentle and patient and eventually Aloy felt well enough to sit up on her own. She swallowed again, throat still sore but not feeling quite so desert.

“Where... where are we? Is this the place... that you were looking for?” Her voice was low and still raspy and she wasn't sure if she was still in a daze or if Sylens was really looking at her with a smile some kind of fondness. He shook his head and simply said,

“Always so many questions.”


End file.
